Did you know the Ferris Wheel is considered an engineering wonder? The Ferris Wheel was designed by George W. Ferris in 1893. It was designed to be the landmark of the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. The wheel is supported by two 140-foot steel towers. The towers are connected by a 45-foot axle, making the axle the largest single piece of forged steel made at that time.

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System was the largest private construction project of its time. The pipeline is 800 miles long and has a diameter of four feet. The zigzagging pipeline carries crude oil from 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle to the terminal at Valdez.

Hedy Lamarr was a famous movie actress of the 1930's. While starring in famous movies, Hedy Lamarr was also an engineer. Lamarr held a patent on technology which is the foundation for today's advanced wireless networks. Lamarr had an idea for frequency hopping: switching from frequency to frequency in split-second intervals. Lamarr's idea, combined with a friend's idea of a device allowing the frequency to be synchronized, created technology that was never used as intended in World War II, but it created the foundation for today's wireless communications and has been used in the control of many U.S. intercontinental missiles.

When it opened in May 2000, Millennium Force broke or helped to break twelve world records. The Millennium Force Roller Coaster at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio was an engineering marvel at the time it was built, and it still continues to dazzle amusement park visitors. Not only was it the fastest but also the world's largest and tallest steel roller coaster at the time. It was the first coaster to use an elevator cable system to get it up the first hill, and it used a magnetic braking system instead of friction. At 310 feet, it was the first coaster to top 300 feet, and it travels at speeds up to 92 miles per hour! The coaster has 226 footers, which contain 9400 yards of concrete. The best thing about the coaster is that it takes riders up at a 45 degree angle and they go down at an 80 degree angle - almost straight down!

Engineers, scientists, and athletes work together to improve snowboarding equipment. Although women have participated in snow sports for a long time, they didn't always have as many choices as men when it came to selecting their gear. But as more women take up snowboarding, they have demanded better equipment, and snowboard manufactures have taken on the challenge to provide better gear based upon the proportions of a woman's body. Because men and women are built differently, their requirements for boots, boards, and skis are different. Women, for example, generally somewhat shorter and have smaller feet than men. So to give women better control over their snowboard, engineers have designed women's snowboards that are a bit shorter with a flex pattern designed to fit a woman's proportions. Women's boards are also generally narrower in the middle than men's boards to allow quick transfer of energy to the edges.